


it's my heart (cause we're so high off the ground)

by hanbrough



Category: Men in Black (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 00:02:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19239769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanbrough/pseuds/hanbrough
Summary: "Love is just a series of chemical reactions. How can it be real?” She takes a deep breath. “It’s a distraction, and I don’t need it. Promise me something?"That gets his attention, and Henry tears his eyes away to see Molly gazing at him somberly.“Anything.”“Promise me that you’ll never be foolish enough to give your heart away to anyone. There’s no use in wasting our time getting hurt while we’re out there living our lives, okay?”“Molly, I-”“Promise?” She looks at him, silently pleading, and how can he say no to that?“I - okay. Sure, yeah, sure.”Molly touches his cheek tenderly, and then she’s gone. He watches her leave with a sick feeling in his stomach that he can't explain.--Or, alternatively, H & M through the years.





	it's my heart (cause we're so high off the ground)

**Author's Note:**

> mib international is a masterpiece because chris hemsworth and tessa thompson invented chemistry (no, i will not take criticism) and it's a crime that movie studios won't let them KISS. title from are you sure? by loote because the song reminds me of them :')
> 
> on a more relevant note, i thought molly's thing about not loving could be useful in a fic. this is an au, but enjoy the mcu and mib references :D 
> 
> also, i don't know agent c's real name or molly's last name so i made it up. lmk if there's canon for either!

It’s Christopher who first comes running over, eagerly telling Henry about the new girl who’s just moved into the house across from his.

“We wanted another agent for our game, didn’t we? Let’s go see if she’s interested, c’mon!” Christopher shouts excitedly, dashing out the door without giving Henry a second to spare.

Henry catches up with his friend, who’s watching a curly-haired brown girl struggling to carry a box into the house.

“Need some help?” Henry calls, and the girl, startled, nearly drops the box. “Oops. Sorry.”

“Hi,” Christopher says, reaching to carry the other side of the box. The girl gives him a grateful look. “I’m Agent C, and that’s Agent H.” Henry awkwardly waves as the girl’s eyes shift towards him.

“Henry,” he clarifies at her questioning look. “That’s Christopher. We’re role playing FBI agents, so we’re all getting code names.”

“Molly,” the girl finally speaks as they waddle into the house, gingerly setting the box onto the counter. “But I guess you can call me Agent M.”

Christopher and Henry exchange mischievous grins. This is going to be good.

\--

“You know she’s hoping you’ll do more than study with her, right?” Molly rolls her eyes as yet another girl approaches Henry in the library, tentatively asking if he’ll “study” with her. Yet again, Henry politely declines. “They all are.”

“Hey, I am pretty smart,” Henry says, putting a hand over his heart and pretending to be offended. “My GPA’s through the roof.”

Molly snorts, flipping through the book she’s reading on Norse mythology. “Yes, I’m sure it has nothing to do with prom coming up and you, with your dashing good looks, still not having a date. When are you going to ask someone, anyways?”

Henry laughs. “You think I’m dashingly good-looking?”

“Not the point,” Molly shoots back, staring in awe at the page she’s just landed on. Henry peers over her shoulder to see someone’s depiction of the Valkyrie, nobly flying into battle with their majestic pegasuses. One of the Valkyrie vaguely looks like Molly. He shrugs.

“I don’t know. There just isn’t anyone I want to ask. Nobody really bothers to look at me beyond the surface.”

“They wouldn’t want to,” Molly teases, giggling. “Or else they’d find out that deep down, you’re just a nerd who likes to look at the stars and wants to become a secret agent.”

“Hey!” Henry exclaims, his attempts at fake anger fading as he joins her in laughter. “You love it.”

“Who says?” Molly challenges, but he can see the affection in her eyes. Packing her bag up, she stands to leave right as Christopher arrives at their table. She waves at him briefly as he sits down, and Henry stares after her fondly.

Distantly, he can hear Christopher snort. “Man, you two are _so_ not subtle.”

\--

“Love isn’t real.”

Henry’s jolted from his thoughts as Molly plops down beside him, fists curled and a hard look in her eyes. He looks on cautiously.

“Want to talk about it?” He asks.

“No.”

“Okay,” he agrees, leans back, and waits. His patience is rewarded.

“Love is just a series of chemical reactions. How can it be real?” Molly bursts out despite herself. She takes a deep breath. “It’s a distraction, and I don’t need it.”

“Well, look on the bright side,” Henry says, spreading his arms out wide. “We’re going to college! From this day on, we get to be whoever we want to be, remember? The universe-”

“-has a way of leading you to where you're supposed to be, yeah,” Molly finishes the sentence, a childhood catchphrase that had stuck despite the years. She’s still tense, but she’s smiling, which Henry counts as a win. He turns his gaze back to the stars.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Molly shifts to look at him. “H?”

“Yeah?” He’s still distracted, making a mental note to look at tonight’s constellation later through his telescope.

“Promise me something?” That gets his attention, and Henry tears his eyes away from the sky to see Molly gazing at him somberly.

“Anything.” The word slips effortlessly from his mouth.

“Promise me that you’ll never be foolish enough to give your heart away to anyone. There’s no use in wasting our time getting hurt while we’re out there living our lives, okay?”

“Molly, I-”

“Promise?” She looks at him, silently pleading, and how can he say no to that?

“I - okay. Sure, yeah, sure.” Henry breaks the stare, its power too overwhelming.

“Thanks, you’re the best.” Molly touches his cheek tenderly, and then she’s gone. He brings his hand up to the point of contact, wondering what exactly had just happened.

There’s a sick feeling in his stomach that he can’t explain, and with thoughts of the stars long gone from his mind, Henry goes to bed.

\--

University isn’t as great as everyone had made it out to be, Molly decides on the first day of orientation, when the school stuffs a thousand students into the same tent to “bond,” and girls more outspoken than her already emerge with budding cliques and condescending looks. But it’s okay, because she has Henry, and when classes actually start, Molly throws herself into the work.

She enjoys computer engineering, because math and science stay ever logical, never failing her. She convinces herself that she’s too busy for a relationship; with big dreams of becoming an FBI agent, there’s too much at stake for her to throw it all away.

Henry, on the other hand, sleeps with anyone and everyone who’ll have him. After he arrives at her apartment, sneaking away from his upteenth one-night stand, Molly wrinkles her nose at him.

“Don’t you ever get bored?” She rolls her eyes, focusing back on the broken code in front of her. _Error_ , the screen reads. _Damn it_.

“Maybe one day I will,” Henry flashes her his trademark grin as she types furiously. “Don’t you ever get bored of constantly studying and never going out?”

“Touche,” Molly concedes, crossing her fingers as she hits _Run_ on the new and improved code. “You know, it’s actually gross how good your grades are when you never study. Especially when you’re a double major.”

“Maybe you should switch to biochemistry or astronomy, then,” Henry plops himself down in the chair across from her. “It’d sure be easier than spending every weekend debugging your code. The FBI recruits all sorts of majors, you know.”

“When we interview together, I’ll be sure to tell them you only put in a quarter of the work for the same position,” Molly remarks as the screen finally flashes green in approval. “Finally!”

Henry smiles at her as she celebrates her fixed code, and she forces herself to ignore the resulting swoop in her stomach.

\--

Four years passes by quickly, and soon they’re graduating, leaving behind a small group of friends to undergo the intense training required to become FBI agents. Molly rolls her eyes as Pawny gives her an alien figurine as a parting gift, brandishing an identical one for Henry.

“You know we won’t be fighting actual aliens, right?” Molly says, smiling nonetheless as she pulls her friend in for a hug.

“You never know,” Pawny shrugs. “H here might just be one. Only aliens can maintain a 4.0 without looking a textbook ever in their life.”

“Very funny,” Henry huffs in fake annoyance. “I’ll miss you for real, though.”

And so they settle into their apartment - shared for practical purposes only, thank you very much - and their budding careers. Their different areas of expertise mostly lead to separate missions, and eventually, their interactions dwindle down to hurried hellos exchanged as they cross paths in the elevator.

Thankfully, there’s some rare downtime in between, and Molly watches Henry cheerfully bustle around the kitchen one Saturday morning. He’s going on about some girl whose name he won’t reveal for some reason; the only hint he’ll give her is that it starts with R.

“She’s amazing! I wish you could meet her, M.”

“You should tell me her name, then,” Molly remarks dryly, and watches her friend’s face pale ever so slightly.

She resists the urge to ask him if he remembers the promise he made her years ago, when she was so angry and bitter at the world. She doesn't expect him to.

—

“Your girlfriend is Riza?!?!”

Molly paces back and forth angrily as the FBI swarms the building. She watches as the #1 criminal on the FBI’s list is brought out in handcuffs and stored away, before turning her fury onto Henry, whose eyes are downcast as he leans against his car.

“What is _wrong_ with you? You know what she does, and what she’s done! You jeopardized your mission and your career over what? A stupid fling?”

Henry looks up. He swallows. “Look, I know it was a mistake. I knew who she was from the very beginning, and I shouldn’t have done it. But when you’re in love, your heart takes over your head.”

“In love?” Molly scoffs. “H, you know it wasn’t real. You can’t be in love, least of all with a criminal.” At this, Henry’s eyes darken.

“What would you know about love, M? You’ve never even given it a chance. Yes, I fell in love with the wrong person, but at least I actually opened up my heart, unlike you, who runs away the second you might have to be emotionally vulnerable and stuffs all your baggage away in the corners of your heart hoping nobody will ever get close enough to you to even begin unpacking it.”

The remark feels like a slap to the face, and Molly is glad her sunglasses are there to cover up the sudden stinging sensation around her eyes.

“Don’t you dare make it my fault that YOU made a crappy decision with repercussions for once in your life, H,” she says, silently applauding herself for keeping it together, before turning around and walking out of sight.

—

A mission goes wrong, and Molly’s hands shake when she gets the call. Even if they haven’t talked in a few d̶a̶y̶s̶ weeks, she’s still his emergency contact, and so she heads to the hospital.

Molly’s heart drops as she sees Henry, looking so peaceful in the bed with his eyes closed despite being hooked up to various machines and dripping bags. She settles herself into a chair in the hallway to wait, twisting her hands together anxiously. She’s sad, and she’s angry about the unspoken things between them, things she now realizes she should’ve told Henry earlier and not when he could be potentially dying from whatever had happened out there.

“Molly Wright?” The sound of her name jolts her out of her reverie, and Molly looks up to see a doctor standing over her, flipping through some papers on a clipboard.

She stands up quickly. “What happened? Is he okay?”

“He’s critically injured, but he’s stable. I’m happy to report that your friend will live, Ms. Wright.” At these remarks, all of a sudden, the world has meaning again.

“Can I see him?” Molly asks.

“Of course.”

As she walks in, she finds that Henry’s eyes have opened, and he’s looking right at her. Any speech she might’ve concocted waiting outside instantly vanishes from her mind.

So she settles with, “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Henry replies, smiling despite himself. “What are you doing here? I thought you hated me.”

“I’m your emergency contact, remember?” Molly sits down on the stool next to the bed. “And besides, I could never hate you.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Henry responds. Molly reaches for his hand, and he lets her.

“I guess-” Molly breaks the ensuing silence first. “I guess you might have had a point. You were in the wrong with Riza, but the part about me - that wasn’t entirely wrong.”

“I’m sorry for saying those things, though,” Henry says somberly. “I shouldn’t have.”

“Thanks for saying that,” Molly plays with their interlocked fingers as she gathers her thoughts together. Henry waits, gazing at her intently.

“You know, after my parents divorced, I was so angry. I was an angry and naive eighteen year old who didn’t want things to change. I learned that work doesn’t let you down the way people do. So I threw myself into it and put my heart aside.

“But you, of all people, proved that wrong. All these years, and you’re still here. I guess that means the series of chemical reactions in my brain that occur when I think of you are real.”

Inexplicably, Henry begins to laugh. Her face is on fire as she stares firmly at the ground.

“M, everyone and anyone who’s ever seen me around you knows that I’ve been in love with you for years,” he says. “I’ve been in love with you since we were children. You were the only one who didn’t realize.”

At his admission, Molly looks up. Henry is looking back fondly, with something she can only describe as love in his eyes, and she can’t help but laugh.

“Of course we’d only confess our feelings when you’re on the brink of death. The universe really has a way of leading you to where you're supposed to be, doesn’t it?”

As she kisses him soundly, hospital machines beeping and all, she knows things will be just fine.


End file.
